Mlaḥsô or Mlahsö ( syc, ܡܠܚܬܝܐ), sometimes referred to as Suryoyo or Surayt, is an extinct or dormant Central Neo-Aramaic language. It was traditionally spoken in eastern

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

and later also in northeastern

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

Syriac Orthodox Christians , native_name_lang = syc , image = St_George_Syriac_orthodox_church_in_Damascus.jpg , imagewidth = 250 , alt = Cathedral of Saint George , caption = Cathedral of Saint George, Damascu ...

. The Mlaḥsô language (Surayt of Mlaḥsô) is closely related to the Surayt of Turabdin but sufficiently different to be considered a separate language, with the syntax of the language having retained more features of

Classical Syriac The Syriac language (; syc, / '), also known as Syriac Aramaic (''Syrian Aramaic'', ''Syro-Aramaic'') and Classical Syriac ܠܫܢܐ ܥܬܝܩܐ (in its literary and liturgical form), is an Aramaic dialect that emerged during the first century ...

than Turoyo. It was spoken in the villages of Mlaḥsô ( tr, Yünlüce, ku, Mela), a village established by two monks from the

Tur Abdin Tur Abdin ( syr, ܛܽܘܪ ܥܰܒ݂ܕܺܝܢ or ܛܘܼܪ ܥܲܒ݂ܕܝܼܢ, Ṭūr ʿAḇdīn) is a hilly region situated in southeast Turkey, including the eastern half of the Mardin Province, and Şırnak Province west of the Tigris, on the borde ...

mountain range, and in the village of ˁAnşa near

Lice Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been recognized as an order, infraorder, or a parvorder, as a result o ...

Diyarbakır Diyarbakır (; ; ; ) is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. It is the administrative center of Diyarbakır Province. Situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress, ...

Etymology

The name of the village and the language is derived from the earlier Aramaic word ''mālaḥtā'', 'salt marsh'. The literary Syriac name for the language is ''Mlaḥthoyo''. The native speakers of Mlaḥsô referred to their language simply as ''Suryô'', or Syriac.

History and distribution

The language was still spoken by a handful of people in the 1970s. The last fluent native speaker of Mlaḥsô, Ibrahim Ḥanna, died in 1998 in

Qamishli Qamishli ( ar, ٱلْقَامِشْلِي, Al-Qāmišlī, ku, قامشلۆ, Qamişlo, syc, ܒܝܬ ܙܠܝ̈ܢ, Bēṯ Zālīn, lit=House of Reeds or syr, ܩܡܫܠܐ, translit=Qamishlo)

. His daughters, Munira in Qamishlo, Shamiram in Lebanon, and son Dr. Isḥaq Ibrahim in Germany are the only speakers left with some limited native proficiency of the language. Recordings of Ibrahim Ḥanna speaking the language are available o
Heidelberg University's Semitic Sound Archive
which were done by Otto Jastrow, a prominent German semiticist who is credited as the modern "discoverer" of the language and published the first modern research papers on the existence of Mlaḥsô and its linguistic features. On 3 May 2009, a historical event in the history of the Mlaḥsô Surayt language took place. The Suroyo TV television station aired the program series
Dore w yawmotho
', which was about the village Mlaḥsô (and the Tur Abdin village Tamarze). Dr. Isḥaq Ibrahim, the son of Ibrahim Ḥanna, was a guest and spoke in the Mlaḥsô language with his sisters Shamiram in Lebanon and Munira in

Qamishli Qamishli ( ar, ٱلْقَامِشْلِي, Al-Qāmišlī, ku, قامشلۆ, Qamişlo, syc, ܒܝܬ ܙܠܝ̈ܢ, Bēṯ Zālīn, lit=House of Reeds or syr, ܩܡܫܠܐ, translit=Qamishlo)

live on the phone. Otto Jastrow was also interviewed regarding his expertise on Mlaḥsô. Turabdin Assyrians/Syriacs viewers and those present at the show could for the first time ever in modern times hear the language live. The extinction of Mlaḥsô can be attributed to the small amount of original speakers of the language, and them being limited to two isolated villages, resulting in a disproportionate loss of speakers during the

Assyrian genocide The Sayfo or the Seyfo (; see below), also known as the Assyrian genocide, was the mass slaughter and deportation of Assyrian / Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan province by Ottoman forces and some Kurdish t ...

compared to Turoyo and other variants of Neo-Aramaic.

Phonology

Mlahsô is phonologically less conservative than Turoyo. This is particularly noticeable in the use of ''s'' and ''z'' for classical ''θ'' and ''ð''. The classical ''v'' has been retained though, while it has collapsed into ''w'' in Turoyo. Also sometimes ''y'' (

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...

/j/) replaces ''ġ''. Mlaḥsô also renders the combination of vowel plus ''y'' as a single, fronted vowel rather than a

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...

or a glide.

Consonants

Vowels

Mlahsô has the following set of vowels: *

Close front unrounded vowel The close front unrounded vowel, or high front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound that occurs in most spoken languages, represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet by the symbol i. It is similar to the vowel sound in the English wo ...

– *

Close-mid front unrounded vowel The close-mid front unrounded vowel, or high-mid front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . For the close-mid front unrounde ...

– *

Open front unrounded vowel The open front unrounded vowel, or low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. It is one of the eight primary cardinal vowels, not directly intended to correspond to a vowel sound of a specific language bu ...

– *

Open back rounded vowel The open back rounded vowel, or low back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . It is called "turned script ''a''", being a rotated ...

– *

Close back rounded vowel The close back rounded vowel, or high back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is u. In ...

–

Morphology

Mlaḥsô is more

conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...

than Turoyo in grammar and vocabulary, using classical Syriac words and constructions while also preserving the original Aramaic form.Kim, Ronald. 2008. "Stammbaum or Continuum? The Subgrouping of Modern Aramaic Dialects Reconsidered." In Journal of the American Oriental Society 128, no. 3, 505-531.

Vocabulary

Example phrases

Example sentences

References

*Jastrow, Otto (1994). ''Der neuaramäische Dialekt von Mlaḥsô''. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. .

External links

Suroyo TV 2009-05-03 Dore w yawmotho - Mlaḥso & Tamarze

Semitisches Tonarchiv: Dokumentgruppe "Aramäisch/Mlahsô" (text in German)

Endangered Languages Project - Mlahso
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mlahso Language Eastern Aramaic languages Neo-Aramaic languages Languages of Syria Languages of Turkey Endangered Afroasiatic languages Languages of Kurdistan